Interview with Allan Shickman author of Zan-Gah and Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country
1. What are some of your favorite books and authors?
I lean strongly toward the classic authors. My favorite is Dostoyevsky. He wrote four major novels (and several minor ones), and my favorite of these is The Brothers Karamazov. All of his books have depth, drama, and incomparable characters. I like authors as different as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Mark Twain. When I find a book I like, I read it over and over through the years. It's like visiting with an old friend.
2. Do you have any writing routines?
My principal technique, which amounts to a routine, is gathering notes and ideas. These come to me at random at any time of the day or night, sometimes small ideas, sometimes large, sometimes inspired by my researches. I know I will forget them if I don't write them down, so I keep a supply of 3x5" cards. The advantage of cards is that you can take a large collection of random ideas and sort them into chapters. Then you can put them in the order that you think you might use them. With the organization of your best ideas, to which you are constantly addingZanGahhe book practically writes itself (heh heh!).
3. Where did you get the idea for the Zan-Gah series?
When I was driving across the western United States in my air-conditioned car, I started wondering what it would be like to cross the continent before we had the advantages of modern life. My landscape settings come from that trip, but I avoided being specific to America. The Zan-Gah stories could take place in Asia, Africa, Anatolia, America, or some place that doesn't begin with an A. Anyway, it was on that trip that I conceived a tale of survival.
4. Why set your story in primitve times? What does it add to the story or let you do that you couldn’t in another setting?
In writing a story about survival in a harsh land, it seemed to me that the difficulties could be accentuated by choosing a time period when people had not yet developed the modern technological advantages. I like primitive tools, the search for essentials like warmth and water, or torrid sun. I like bare feet.
5. In Zan-Gah, you have character with names like Zan and Naz and Dael that seem to foreshadow things about them. Was that intentional? Was there a meaning behind it?
Not all my names have meaning. I avoided names like Irving or Eleanor because they had to sound prehistoric. Rydl comes from my nephew Rider, and Lissa-Na comes from my niece Alyssa. Chul sounded a bit like "churl," and the river Nobla sounds noble. So shoot me! I like to play around. In the next book, Dael and the Painted People, I name the nastiest character after my brother-in-law. He thought that was funny.
6. What can you tell us about the third installment to the series? (Hopefully coming out soon.)
I am glad you asked, because it is a subject I warm up to. The third book, Dael and the Painted People, continues the second story, Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country. Dael goes off with Sparrow to live with the painted people. On the whole they are happy living with them, but there are some very rough spots. Here is what I will have on the back cover:
The whole time the shaman was speaking, he shook a bony finger at his enemy—a finger that was almost doubled in length by the long nail.
“Did you dare to strike my brother?” Mlaka demanded, not without an evident note of sadness.
Dael did not answer. His eyes were fixed on an empty corner of the chamber. Something back there was bothering him, and he looked more closely. His vision was blurred and he was a little dizzy. Who was that standing apart in the shadows? Dael stopped listening to the voices around him and intently focused on someone he only gradually recognized—a wrinkled, haggard old woman that nobody else could see. She had glazed eyes, and a spear in her breast. It was Hurnoa, dead and yet alive!
When Dael, guilty and tormented, came to live with the painted people, he longed for peace and restoration; but without knowing it he made a powerful enemy.
A story of conflict, healing, hate, and love.
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Dynamite. I am really proud of Dael and the Painted People and expect it to be out by July. Here is what the cover is going to look like:
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